


Leverage Inc. meets the Machine

by foldedpages



Category: Leverage, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Age Of The Geek Baby, Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion, Crime, F/F, F/M, but later, hardison gets to meet harold finch and the machine, hopefully fun, leverage meets person of interest, not really a relationship fic, there will probably be some blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 11:35:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7616503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foldedpages/pseuds/foldedpages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Machine presents Mr. Finch with one of Eliot Spencer's identities while Leverage is on a job, is it because he is a victim or a perpetrator? Will Reese and Shaw be able to protect him, or will Leverage, Inc. end up protecting them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leverage Inc. meets the Machine

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! 
> 
> This is my very first posting on AO3!  
> I'm honestly not sure where it's headed yet, so comments are very much appreciated.  
> (I work harder when I get feedback)
> 
> Enjoy!

Harold Finch sat at his usual place, the wide desk near the window with a view of which he barely took notice. Raindrops streamed down the glass, and looked satisfactorily at Bear, who he had already taken for a walk. The smell of the books that surrounded him seemed stronger today, probably from the humidity, and he breathed it in and waited for his small working family to bring life to the quiet library.

Shaw arrived first, wet and breathing hard from a long jog. Pulling her damp hair into a low ponytail, she looked at the photo that Harold had pinned to the board.

"Our new number?" She asked, although she already knew the answer.

"Yes, but that's all he seems to be so far. I can't find anything substantial on him."

"No name?" She squinted at the photo and then glanced around. "Hey, where's the big guy?"

"I'm here," John announced. He pulled off his damp suit jacket and shook it away from the books before hanging it over a chair to dry. "Did you miss me?"

"We got a new number." Shaw gestured to the photo on the board. "Does he look familiar to you?"

"Should he?" John asked, looking from the photo to Harold.

Harold shrugged. "I don't know, but the only identity I can find for him seems to be evolving right in front of my eyes."

"What do you mean?" Shaw stepped over to the desk and looked over Harold's shoulder at the computer.

"Well, at first it seemed to be a fairly solid identity. I can find birth records, dental records, school records, evidence that he has existed, but it seems to have been... Oh, no, wait. I am finding more as we speak."

"What do we know right now, Finch?" John asked.

"His name is Darwin Ulysses Gambol, he is in his thirties, graduated from a rather prestigious program as a chef almost a decade ago, and it looks like he most recently worked at a brewpub in Portland."

"Okay, so he's a chef in New York. That's not uncommon. What's he going to do, give somebody food poisoning?" Shaw shifted her weight and eyed his photo again.

John raised an eyebrow slightly. "Long move, from Portland to New York. Was it for work?"

"No, from the looks of his LinkedIn resume, he is attempting to secure a job at a high-end restaurant in Manhattan." Harold pulled up a graduation photo of their new number on his computer and began to analyze it.

Shaw tilted her head. "If he moved for work, you'd think he'd already have a job. He married? Maybe he moved for somebody else's work."

"No, not married... Just what I was afraid of," Harold said. "The pixels on our new number are locked, but look here, the pixels of the professor whose hand he is shaking and those in the background are from a different image. This image has been photoshopped."

"Why would anybody establish a fake identity to become a chef?" Shaw asked.

John shrugged. "If it's to get access to a location, there are easier ways to do it."

"Yeah, like be a waiter."

Harold suppressed a smile. "I am hacking into the email provided on his resume. It looks like he just replied to an email from Tres Kush, a fusion bistro. He has scheduled an interview in an hour. Excellent, so we know where to find him."

"Great, so can we have lunch there?" Shaw rubbed Bear's neck. "Do you want to wear the vest today?" She asked the dog.

"I don't see why you couldn't. Their reviews are good. I'm sending Mr. Gambol's photo to our friend Detective Fusco." Harold looked at John. "Are you going with Shaw and Bear, or do you have other plans?"

"I'm kind of hungry," John replied.

The bistro had amber lighting and deep red walls. It was brighter for the lunch crowd, but for dinner, the tables would be draped with colorful cloth and be decorated with little candle jars that customers would probably steal.

"Nice place," Shaw said as she slid into a corner booth with a view of the entrance and kitchen doors. The hall that led to the restrooms was blocked from view by an orange shoji screen. "I want steak."

"You haven't opened your menu," John told her. "Maybe they don't have steak."

"This is definitely the kind of place that has steak."

"I hope you're willing to share with Bear."

"Our guy is here."

Darwin Gambol was about 5'9, and although he looked nervous, he moved with a great deal of confidence. He and the restaurant owner shook hands. As the owner led him toward an office in the hall near the rest rooms, his eyes swept the room and landed on Shaw, who was staring at him curiously. He ran his hand through his longish hair and smiled just slightly.

"He's confident," Shaw said as Darwin disappeared behind the screen.

"Well, you were looking at him as if he is a steak," John replied.

"What? I'm hungry." She handed her menu to the waiter. "Water and steak aus juice."

"Lemon salsa fillet for me, please."

Their waiter disappeared into the kitchen without speaking.

“Did you just get made?” Harold asked. He hoped that Fusco would get back with him soon.

"Shaw did, at least. Not very busy here today," John observed. The only other customer was a thin blonde picking slowly at a plate of pulled pork nacho appetizers.

Harold's voice echoed in their ears. "That might be because the last several revues the restaurant received have been terrible. Two months ago, their head chef was arrested for bribery and assault. There aren't many details, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians were involved. They haven't been able to keep a chef since."

"Oh, that's nice. So why does this guy want to work here?"

"That sounds like an interview question to me. John, could you -"

"I'm on it." John excused himself from the table and walked towards the restrooms. The office where Darwin was being interviewed was down the hall close to the back exit, and

John stood just out of sight near the slightly open door.

"My girlfriend always wanted to live in New York," Darwin was saying. He had a slight Southern drawl. "So I figure, why not? Ain't getting any younger, know what I'm saying?" He laughed awkwardly.

"How long do you two expect to stay here?"

"She loves it. We might be here forever."

"Good, good. You worked as lead chef at a restaurant in Portland?"

"Yeah. We made our own micro brews, and I designed the menu around those. It wasn't easy, let me tell you. There is an art to micro brew menus that I had a hard time getting through to my employer. I took that place from a second-rate microbrewery and turned it into a gastro pub."

"Hey, John, food's here," Shaw hissed into John's ear.

John rejoined Shaw at the table. "That sounded like a regular interview to me, Finch."

"It did to me, too. We'll have to keep an eye on our chef and see what happens."

Shaw swallowed a mouthful of steak. "Blondie over there likes to talk to herself. Maybe she's a threat?"

"Try to listen in."

"I have been. I can't hear what she's saying, but she thought something was funny a minute ago. Doesn't seem too interested in the food."

"Maybe she's a critic."

The waiter came to refill their glasses, and the restaurant owner came back out of the back with Darwin. He glanced at their table and smiled at Shaw again.

Almost as soon as Darwin passed through the kitchen doors, the blonde stood up and headed toward the restrooms.

Shaw looked over her demolished steak at John. "Guess it's my turn, huh?"

The blonde was not in the restroom when Shaw went in, and there were few other places she could be. Shaw crept along the wall and peered into the office through the small window in the door. The blonde was rooting quickly through file cabinets and sliding various papers into her messenger bag as she moved along.

"Finch, crazy girl is doing something weird."

"What exactly is she doing, Ms. Shaw?"

"Not sure, but it involves taking papers from the filing cabinets in the office. I'm going to head back before she spots me."

"Very good, Ms. Shaw. John, did you get that?"

"I got it. Want us to clone her phone?"

"It seems an appropriate thing to do.”

“Think this guy’s a perpetrator?” Shaw asked John as she slid back into her seat.

“Not sure.” John leaned down and encouraged Bear to make friends with the blonde across the room.

Bear immediately ran over and put his snout into the blond girl’s purse. She looked down at the dog and then looked around for its owner.

“So sorry,” John said, leaning down next to the dog and activating the clone function on his phone. “He just got away from me there. Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite.” He smiled at the girl, who smiled back and pet Bear on the head obligingly. “He likes you.”

The girl raised her eyebrows. “He does? How do you know?” she asked, adding quickly, “I mean, what’s his name?”

“Bear.”

“Bear? That’s funny.” Tilting her head, she looked down at the dog. “Do you think you’re a bear? Because you’re a dog.  Ha. Bear.”

John apologized again and led Bear back to his table with Shaw. Shaw gave the dog a small piece of steak as a reward. “Did it work?” Shaw asked.

“It did, Ms. Shaw. Very clever with the dog. Bear works very hard for us.”

“He earns his keep,” John added. “Finch, the girl is leaving the restaurant. Our guy is still in the kitchen.”

“Try to clone his phone, too, please.” Finch swiveled a little in his chair. Sometimes he wished he could see what was happening as well as hear it. “Our girl does seem to talk to herself. It almost sounds like she’s talking to someone else, though. Whoever it is, they’re not on her phone.”

“She saying anything interesting?”

“She misses Portland, wants to know how to tell if a dog liked her, which you can probably thank yourself for, and if someone thinks Eliot will get a job.” He paused. “She knows that her phone has been hacked. She just told Eliot to get out, and I’ve lost her.”

Shaw jumped up from the table and sprinted to the kitchen door. The kitchen staff looked at her curiously. The door to the alley was propped open, and the restaurant owner was instructing one of the staff on the proper methods of taking out the trash. Shaw interrupted. “The guy who was in here, did he leave out that door?” Everyone nodded.

“Did we lose Mr. Gambol?” Finch asked.

Shaw let the kitchen door swing shut and looked at John. “Something tells me his name is Eliot.” She furrowed her brow. “Hold on. That sounds… Oh, I knew he looked familiar! Come on, John, we need to get back. I might know who this guy actually is.”

“Bear has the girl’s scent, Finch,” John said after paying the bill. “We could track her.”

“If they’re connected, it might be a good idea. I haven’t been able to locate his residence yet. Ms. Shaw, you can go with Mr. Reese if you like, or you could join me for tea.”

“I’ll take the tea, I guess. It’s not every day I know more about the mark than you do. Be careful, John, if this guy’s who I think he is, he might be the perpetrator.”

John led Bear back to where the girl had been sitting and let him get her scent. “I’m not sure how well this is going to work. It’s pretty wet out here, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop raining.”

Shaw pat Bear on his head as she walked away. “I have faith in you.”

By the time Shaw returned to the library, she wasn’t actually sure how much faith she had in Bear or John. She peeled her jacket from her wet skin and hung it up. “Don’t mind me,” she said, as she squelched into the room. “I just feel like I went for a swim.” She sat into a chair near his desk with a final unpleasant squishing sound.

Finch smiled but eyed the puddles on the floor with apprehension. He nudged the tea tray towards her. “Tell me, Ms. Shaw, why did you feel it necessary to come all the way back, in the rain, to give me information that you could just as easily have shared elsewhere?”

“There are dry clothes in the chest near the chain-link fence, Shaw,” John’s voice informed them.

“Thanks.” Shaw changed her clothes while she explained to Finch that this man’s name was not the kind of name she wanted to throw around in mixed company. “Eliot Spencer. It took me forever to remember it. I’m a little ashamed. The guy wasn’t a legend, but his name gets tossed around a bit. Like I know a guy who got punched kind of a thing.”

“Spencer,” John’s voice echoed. “That sounds a little familiar to me, too. Why?”

“Guy’s a hitter, but I don’t think he uses guns, at least not what I heard last. Kind of hands-on, if you know what I mean. Works for hire, but he has worked for the government.”

Finch ran a search for Elliot Spencer. “I’ll give Detective Fusco a head’s up on that name and see what he can dig up. Ms. Shaw, I think you’ll be interested to know that there is actually a website dedicated to exactly what you just mentioned.”

“What?”

“Getting punched by Mr. Spencer.”

“I wonder if one of those exists for me,” John mused. “Bear thinks the girl went into an office building a couple miles from the restaurant.”

“Be careful, Mr. Reese. It seems that Mr. Gambol – or Mr. Spencer, if that is his real name – might be quite dangerous.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you liked it!


End file.
